Multimedia platforms are systems wherein multimedia applications are implemented; for instance, a unified message-handling application or an interactive voice-server application. A unified message-handling platform refers to a system that allows for recording of various kinds of messages, such as telephone messages, electronic messages or faxes, and then showing them to the recipient in their original form (voice, text, image) or in another form. Among the multimedia services that a unified message-handling platform offers, the following multimedia services can be mentioned by way of example:                1) recording telephone messages;        2) recording electronic messages;        3) listening to telephone messages;        4) listening to electronic messages;        5) printing telephone messages on a fax.        
In order to implement such services, the unified message-handling platform comprises various signal-processing resources, in particular resources for connecting the multimedia platform to the telephone network, resources for recording telephone and electronic messages in a storage unit of the platform, resources for playing back recorded messages, resources for converting electronic messages into audio messages, and resources for converting telephone messages into text. Advantageously, the platform also includes resources for compressing messages before they are recorded, as well as echo-cancellation resources. All these signal-processing resources come in the form of software or hardware.
At present, such signal-processing resources are controlled directly by the multimedia platform application. Any modification at the multimedia platform resource level (for instance, adding a resource or replacing a resource by a more recent one) implies the modification of the multimedia platform application layer, i.e., requires the platform application program to be rewritten or supplemented. And yet, due to the constant evolution of hardware in the multimedia field, it is important to have an evolutive multimedia platform, i.e., one that can support any kind of signal-processing resource or transport-protocol addition or modification.
Also, the invention is the product of research conducted in relation to multimedia platforms with a view to improving their evolutionary capabilities.